Lashing out

I am a survivor.  There I said it. I still don't feel it, I still don't accept it, but I have said it. When I think of survivors I think of people that have gone through horrific things and came out of his battered and bruised and effected. Crippled - but running marathons, scarred - but becoming a lawyer, sexually abused - but standing strong in the face of her abuser.  Those are survivors. To call myself a survivor is to accept what was done to me. To accept that I was raped by the pastor that led the congregation I was a part of. Accept that the man that, I married, I trusted, had babies with, believed in, beat me and finally pushed me down a flight of stairs that broke my neck. That lied to the paramedics when they got to the house. That after neck surgery, breast reconstruction surgery, two years of physical therapy, I was stupid enough to stay with him. Even after all those things...I still don't consider myself a survivor or a victim. I don't feel strong I feel weak. I feel like I failed my children and every woman out there that was strong enough to walk away before it got really bad.
I can not answer why I didn't walk away sooner? I never want to answer that question, I always want to  answer that question with a question....why did he beat me? I know whathe told me.  He always said that I was the only one that could push his buttons.  I knew exactly what to say to really hit at his very soul. I had so much power over him that I provoked his abuse. So if I was that powerful, than why wasn't I powerful enough to stop him? Why am I the one that suffered through the bruises and twisted wrists? The surgeries and physical therapy? I still didn't say enough. I still believed that he would change. I lived in shame of the other women. The women that he met online. The women he spent nights and weeks with. Amazing the kind of abuse another human being will put another through. The physical usually heals, but the emotional leaves wounds so deep that they fester. You don't want to fester. You want to heal and go on, but its always in the back of your mind that you are broken. You always find yourself asking the question - what is wrong with me? Why did he abuse me? What is wrong with me that he had to find satisfaction in someone elses bed? If only I had been a better wife, better mother, better lover. If only I could be a better listener, better cook. He wouldn't need to cheat or become so angry.
I am a survivor. I survived his anger when he shoved me so that I fell down the stairs, breaking my neck. I survived his threats and his beatings. I survived his humilation when he told me that he had slept with my ex-sister-in-law, my best-friend, the neighbor, the sunday school teacher of the church he pastored. I still feel the humilation as I sat in the front row and listened as he confessed his sins in front of the whole congregation, giving up his commission. Asking for their forgiveness and forgiveness for the women he seduced.  But never once did he ask for my forgivness. Maybe that is why I couldn't forgive him. All I ever wanted to hear from him was that he was sorry.  But he was never sorry.  He was sorry for being caught. He was sorry that he lost his temper, but if I hadn't pushed him I wouldn't have gotten hurt. He was sorry, but not for what he had done to me. Only for what he had gotten caught at. He was a narrsasistic, selfish bastard, who never thought about what his action would do to his wife.
How he humilated his children. I see what their father's hippocrital behavior has done. He see's none of that. That is why I lash out. That is why I lash out now. Anger.